


Incorporeal

by Malteaser



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, Domestic Polyamory, Dysfunctional Family, Ghost Drifting, Hermann Gottlieb Has MS, Hurt/Comfort, Kidfic, Lars Gottlieb: Professional Dickfarmer, Multi, Newt is Bipolar, Protective!Newt, Selective Selection of EU Canon, Vanessa Wears a Prosthetic, Warning: Emotional Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 08:38:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1298503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malteaser/pseuds/Malteaser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt really has no idea what he's doing, but he's trying. He's trying very, very hard. So is Hermann. So is Vanessa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Matter of Control

Newt didn’t actually know what to do with dick parents.

That wasn’t to say that his parents were perfect people, or that his childhood was perfect, or anything like that, and he’d be pretty suspicious of anyone who tried to claim that about anyone’s childhood. His mom hadn’t been around a lot, which had stung when he was a little kid, but had made a lot more sense when he was older, and it hadn’t been as though he didn’t know that she loved him- twice, he’d had a crisis and she’d thrown her work to her understudies and got on a plane to join him in the States, which was proof enough for him. His Dad could get very caught up in his work, but he hadn’t ever been left alone or neglected. When they’d lived in Germany there’d been Aunt Hedy- not his actual aunt, the woman his father had been married to when he came along, it was a long story, the short version was that they were Ossis and understood that being married would get them a better shot at an apartment that wasn’t crap- to look after him. After they’d moved to the States, they’d lived a ten minute bike ride from Uncle Gunther and Uncle Illia, who had very quickly decided to act as though Newt were one of their kids and just had unusually involved birth parents. That had caused a little friction between his uncles and his father, but not a lot, and there hadn’t been any pressure to choose who he loved more or any kind of shit like that. Being who he was he didn’t have a lot of friends as a kid, but he did have a kind-of stepbrother he chatted with on AIM, and eight cousins, the youngest three of which thought he was the coolest thing since those sneakers with the lights in the soles, so that hadn’t been as bad as it could have been either.

Then there had been the period between the ages of twelve and fifteen where he’d been more in than out of psychiatric care, but he had support through all that- his dad and his uncles and his cousins, and his stepbrother and Aunt Hedy who, due to the virtues of time zones, would be up when everyone else was asleep (mostly) so he had someone to talk with. His Mom had even taken a bunch of gigs in Mexico in order to be on the same continent as him. They’d helped him through, and as a result he managed to get a dual MD/PhD at sixteen, around the same time as he was able to sleep the psychiatric leash for more than a few weeks at a time. Mom had taken him on a whirlwind tour of Germany to celebrate, and also to make sure he had a feel for how beer and wine mixed (or didn’t) with his meds before he went off to get a dual PhD/D.Sc at Columbia.

So, yeah, the point here was that Newt’s parents and various parent-like figures were surprisingly not very dickish about their kids. Parents, in Newt’s world, were people who fill up your inbox with requests that he at least confirm that he was still living after Kaiju attack, sent care packages every month complete with Girl Scout cookies which had been brought in bulk and then frozen for just that purpose, and generally only inspired dread in the sense of impending embarrassment when they showed up.

Not dread, like your stomach tying itself into knots every time you hear his footsteps, like feeling a foot tall every time you speak and knowing that he was only going to cut you down smaller, like being afraid and angry and hating him and then hating yourself more because he’s your father and you’re supposed to love him.

That wasn’t his life. That was Hermann’s.

Even three years and after VK-Day, it wasn’t always obvious to Newt whether emotions that didn’t really feel like they belonged to him were coming from his brain or from ghost drifting with Hermann’s, which was what he was going to blame on the fact that he spent twenty minutes wondering absently if maybe he’d skipped a dose or six or double dosed a few days in a row or something, before realizing that both Hermann and Lars were not visible anywhere in the main room and that could definitely provoke the kind of dread he was currently experiencing. Then he excused himself from the group, and went and found Vanessa.

Vanessa was talking with Mako about her hair- she’d gotten downright avant-garde since the war ended and the PPDC relaxed a bit, and the rumor mill (by which he meant Tendo, mostly) had it that she was considering getting a Mohawk- when he found her.

“Do you know where Hermann went to?” he interrupted as politely as he could.

Vanessa was thankfully a lot quicker with these things that either Hermann or himself. She took a quick look around the room, her eyes narrowed, and she replied with “Lars?”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen him around either.”

Vanessa winced. “That’s no good.”

Mako coughed politely, and they both turned to her. “Dr. Gottlieb and his father went in the LOCCENT. There was some talk about seeing the new Jaegers.”

Vanessa and Newt exchanged looks- Vanessa looking to see if he was up to doing anything, Newt more or less looking for the same thing. He has mentioned that he doesn’t really know what to do with dick parents, right?

“You know, I think my foot is swelling and my stump is getting irritated,” Vanessa said. “Would you be a dear and find my husband and tell him I think we should make this an early night.”

“Sure!” Newt said, relieved.

“Thank you Mako, you’re a lifesaver,” Vanessa said, as he walked away. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, I still say you won’t be happy if you try to do platinum, but…”

The Hong Kong Shatterdome was half research station, half first responder station these days- not very different from what it had been during the height of the war, but as Newt hadn’t been stationed there during the Golden Age of fighting Jaegers, he couldn’t really compare it. He’d only come during the last days of war, when the world was either going to burn or they were all going to commit multiple acts of treason to save it, and the difference between then and now was staggering. The Shatterdome of today was fuller, cleaner, brighter: burnt-out bulbs were few and far between, the paint wasn’t chipped, and there was the unmistakable emptiness that came from the fact that very few people actually lived on base anymore.

The most striking difference was the LOCCENT, which was empty save for Hermann and Dr. Dick Farmer. One of the monitoring systems was on, showing the simulation score for the Shatterdome’s only Jaegers, the first of the Mark VI models: Blue Monarch and Medusa Rebel. Hermann had poured his heart and soul into coding those things, leaving room for any number of modifications that might need to be made if they were needed to do any fighting, rather than assisting in clearing the wreckage left from natural and manmade disasters as was currently their duty. So, Lars was probably pointing out every possible inadequacy in their design and pinning it on whatever he perceived to be Hermann’s shortcomings.

Once he got closer, Newt could see that he was doing it while holding Hermann’s cane out of his reach.

Newts literally saw red for a moment, because even at the height of his clashes with Hermann he’d never done anything more than just _think_ about sawing his cane in half, because he might be an asshole, but he wasn’t _that_ asshole, and apparently Hermann’s dad was that asshole in a really shitty, gaping way, and wow that metaphor got really disgusting really fast.

Just like how this had gotten really disgusting really fast.

Newt flung himself in a good approximation of how his drunken self moved into the LOCCENT, and managed to knock the cane out of Lars’ grip. It fooled exactly no one, but he got away with it because calling him out would require acknowledging that Lars pulled shit like taking his son’s mobility away so as to more effectively belittle him.

“Sorry, Hermann,” he said cheerfully, picking the cane back up and handing it back to its rightful owner. Hermann took it with the same stiff-upper lipped dignity he always had when his dad was around, but they were definitely ghost drifting, because he could feel Hermann’s relief practically radiating from him. “Anyway, Vanessa’s looking for you, she’s feeling, like, super-pregnant and looking to leave so you might want to go do that.”

“Yes, thank you Newton, I’ll just log out-”

“Don’t bother man, I’ve got this.”

Hermann blinked. Twice. Newt could feel him weighing getting away from his father and leaving Newt alone with his father, and for the first time probably ever self preservation won.

“Thank you Newton,” Hermann said, and then left.

Newt proceeded to ignore Lars and shut the LOCCENT back down. This, predictably, lasted about seven seconds.

“Did you want to speak to me, Dr. Geiszler?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to reply with ‘No, I don’t want to speak with you, ever, I want you to stay far, far away so we can all pretend that you don’t exist’ and it only didn’t come out because he physically bit down on his tongue, and also, he was still kind of ghost drifting and Hermann would never in a million years want to have that said to his father. Or, really, deal with the fall out of that being said to his father.

Newt took a deep breath and finished exiting out of every application. “For reasons no number of Drifts will ever allow me to understand, Hermann wants to have a polite relationship with you. So, to that end, I’ve refrained from doing any number of things that would have you crawling back to Germany in disgrace.” Or, well, hooking Tendo up with Vanessa to such an end while maybe getting in touch with his mother’s PR people. It was a politics thing, and that was really not anything he had any desire to learn to deal with. There was no need for Lars to know that, though.

He shut down the computer, and turned back to Lars.

“I’m doing it not because I’ve got any illusions that one day you’ll stop being-” He motioned at Lars, his upper lip curling into a sneer that was made for Hermann’s face, and something of that must have been showing through, because Lars actually looked startled. “You,” he finished, unable to come up with a vulgar enough synonym. “But more because Hermann dislikes public spectacles and if I did he might freeze me out for a decade again, and I’d rather just not; that sucked enough the first time. Tell you what though- you pull shit like you did with his cane again, and I’ll risk that. He can freeze me out and I’ll spend the rest of my life only hearing about him through Vanessa if that means getting you to stay away from him.”

By the time he’d finished speaking, Lars had recovered his poise somewhat. “You misunderstood what was happening here, I th-”

The withering glare Newt shot him was also Hermann’s, which cut off the excuses nicely.

“I’ve drifted with your son, remember? Come on, I’ll walk you back to the party,” Newt said. His voice sounded different- a lower timbre, a different accent. He was rolling his r’s.

Lars followed him into the elevator, and waited until they were already on their way back down to the main floor before saying “You don’t think very highly of me, do you Dr. Geiszler?”

“I’ve nearly been eaten by Kaiju I think of more highly than you,” Newt said. And then , because that probably didn’t seem like an insult to anyone who knew about his tattoos, added “And I’ve been threatened by black market kingpins I think of more highly than you. People I also think of more highly than you include the BuenaKai people who shorted out my phone with their blue food coloring water bombs and the first dissertation adviser who tried to steal my work. Out of all the petty, willfully blind cowards that supported the Wall, you are my least favorite. If I had to list everyone I’ve ever met in order of how much respect I have for them, you’d probably be dead last. So no, I don’t think very highly of you.”

“I supposed I don’t need to ask if you’re serious,” Lars retorted.

“Look, like I said, Hermann wants for the two of you to be polite to one another, and I am trying not to prevent that,” Newt said. “So just try to act like less of a douchecanoe and I’ll pretend you warrant Kaiju-levels of respect and it’ll almost be like we don’t have a problem, okay?”

The door on the elevators opened, and Newt left before Lars could actually reply. He wasn’t followed, so he grabbed his coat and went outside.

Hermann was waiting, leaning against the cab and drumming his fingers to the beat of the music that was blaring from the public celebration not two blocks away. They were still ghost drifting- that was Newt’s nervous tics, not his.

“ _What did you do, Newton_?” Hermann asked in German.

“ _Nothing_ ,” Newt replied, holding the door open as Hermann clambered inside. “ _I just told him that taking your cane was not appreciated_.”

Vanessa looked up sharply at that. Hermann frowned, his lips pressed thinly together until his mouth was an angry slash.

“ _Say the word, treasure, and he’s gone_ ,” Vanessa said. She wasn’t talking about Newt.

“ _I appreciate the sentiment_ ,” Hermann said, even though he clearly wanted to say something much less calm. “ _But Father has always been this way, and I have always dealt with it, and I will continue to do so._ ”

Newt and Vanessa exchanged looks. Then Vanessa took Hermann’s right hand, Newt took his left, and they were silent the rest of the way home.


	2. Homeward Bound

The Gottlieb-Geiszler residence was a house in Mui Wo about half an hour from the city’s center and maybe an hour from the Shatterdome. Pre-Kaiju, the place would have been way, way, waaaaaaaaaaay above their combined paygrades, but they’d been lucky enough to snatch it up before the market on Hong Kong properties began to bounce back: it was a four bedroom detached house- five bedrooms if you counted the built-in basement apartment that was technically Newt’s separate residence, and had probably been intended for, like, an amah or something.

Valerie had been successfully put to bed before they arrived, but Alesha was having trouble coaxing Sophia out from under the couch when they arrived home.

“There you see? Now your parents are back-” Sophia scuttled out and ran over to Vanessa. “And we’re both going to get in trouble,” she turned around to face them, and then frowned. “Ah jeez, you’ve been ghost drifting. What brought this on?”

“It is a personal matter, Dr. Henare,” Herman said firmly.

Alesha was not impressed with this, but before she could say anything Newt cut her off with “Lars.”

“Ah, no details for me then,” she said.

“Babies kicking?” Sophia asked, sticking her hands under Vanessa’s shirt.

She jumped a little, and then said “No, the babies are asleep. But they’ll probably be kicking by the time you wake up.”

Sophia pouted. Vanessa took her by the hand, and led her into her up the stairs throwing one last look at Newt and Hermann as she went.

“Look, the quicker we run through these questions, the quicker I’ll feel okay about leaving,” Alesha said.

 Hermann rolled his eyes, but didn’t try to leave. Instead, he forestalled her questions by saying “I am not experiencing either mania or depression; Newton does not seem to be suffering from any cramping, pain, vertigo, or other symptom of a flare-up.”

“I’m really not,” Newt confirmed. “I did get some of his facial expressions though, and I was talking in his accent a bit. Also, he was doing that thing where I drum my fingers to the drumbeat.”

“I was?” Hermann asked.

“When you were waiting for me by the taxi,” Newt clarified.

“I assume you were in physical contact once you got in the taxi,” Alesha said more than asked.

They both nodded. This didn’t happen often, per say, but it happened often enough for them to know that physical proximity tended to make things pass more quickly.

“Well, you’re still moving in synch,” Alesha said. “Okay, back to back, let me see how far you’re in mentally.

Hermann was able to guess the category Alesha chose for her flashcards- American television series. He was able to mostly guess the first one (“The space cowboys one that wasn’t even on the air for a full season.”) and the correct franchise for the third (“Some kind of CSI procedural.”) but was completely off base on the other three. Newt did better- he knew the category was classical music, and was able to guess the first, second, and fourth composers (Bach, Mozart, and Wenger respectively) and be in the neighborhood of the second (“It’s one of the Russian ballet dudes.”).

“You’re in the safe zone. Barely,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you shared dreams tonight, and judging from this they’ll probably be Dr. Gottlieb’s. It should fade overnight- if you find yourselves acting on each other’s mannerisms, try to find either myself or Dr. Moon.”

“I’ll be sure to do that, Dr. Henare,” Hermann said firmly. “Now if you wouldn’t mind, it’s been a long trying night and-”

“You want it over with,” Alesha finished for him. “Yeah, yeah, I’m going.”

She grabbed her coat and her pocketbook. By the time she reached the door, Hermann was already in the Master bedroom.

“He’s grateful,” Newt said lamely.

“Yeah, I know. I’ve known him my entire adult life, remember?” Alesha said, and then she was gone, leaving him alone with a husband who was pissed enough that he could have felt it even if there had never been a Drift and a wife who was as much at a loss as he was.

This was not going to be fun and it was probably not going to go away for a while, because here’s the thing: Hermann yelled a lot less since the war ended.

Actually no, that wasn’t entirely true, because technically the war had been over when it turned out Hermann had the symptoms of one of his manic episodes and Newt ended up with the symptoms of his flare ups and then it had turned out that they both had the Precursors in the back of their brains trying to turn them in Manchurian agents, among other things. That had involved a great deal of yelling.

But since Sophia was born, since they got the house, he didn’t yell as much- didn’t want to do anything that might give his kids the same reflexive dread of his voice that he had about his father’s. So instead he stewed until they were in their office at the Shatterdome- or when Vanessa was the one he was upset with, went to her office.

He was stewing himself into a Marcia Brown book when Vanessa entered the master bath and hooked her chin over Newt’s head as he was taking his sweet time brushing his teeth.

“How’s he doing?” she murmured.

“He is not happy,” Newt said. “With either of us.”

“And my ears work well within the accepted norms, thanks,” Hermann snapped.

Vanessa sighed. “What did he even want to talk to you about?”

“The Mark VI Jaegers,” Hermann replied. “Specifically the matter of cost-benefit analysis.”

Vanessa rolled her eyes so hard they nearly fell out of her head. “He does remember that when Mako and Raleigh brought Monarch to Sydney, Australia took a step _back_ from civil war, right?”

“My father dislikes the Jaegers, he always has, even when they were our only option. In his mind there’s something inherently childish about everything from their names to the very concept of Drifting, and there’s no place for it in the real world.”

Newt snorted. “Yeah, because we all know how well real-world solutions like walls work against giant alien monsters.”

“I don’t agree with him, obviously,” Hermann said, irritated.

“No one’s saying you do,” Vanessa placated, shooing Newt out of the bathroom.

Hermann looked over at him from the bed. “So, you got my facial expressions and my accent.”

“Yeah, and it really freaked your dad out,” Newt said, inching towards the bed. “It was kind of funny, actually.”

Hermann snorted. “I’m sure.”

Newt took that as permission, and climbed into bed, carefully not to jostle Hermann’s leg pillow. Neither of them said anything for a minute, and Newt was about to launch straight into unrelated work gossip when Hermann sighed.

“He’s only here because it’s election year.”

“Huh?”

Hermann scoffed, but declined to clarify. Vanessa walked back out of the bathroom and sat down on the edge of the bed to take off her prosthesis as Newt did some quick mental calculations. Okay, yes, 2028 was divisible by four, but Germany got a new Chancellor via a failed vote of confidence less than a year ago and Chief Executive Xu had just won her reelection, so…

He gave up. “Vanessa, what election is going on that concerns Lars?”

“The EU,” Vanessa replied absently.

‘The EU has elections?’ he thought, apparently loud enough for Hermann to start laughing at him.

“Okay, fine, you caught me, I have no idea how the EU works. I don’t think the EU was even a thing when I left Berlin,” Newt rolled over to face Vanessa, and Hermann continued to laugh. “Vanessa, you’re the person in this bed with a poli-sci degree, was the EU a thing in 1995?”

“It was established in 1993 with the Maastricht Treaty,” Vanessa said, settling herself under the covers. “Though there were several precursor organizations.”

“And the EU has what to do with the presence of Lars in Hong Kong?”

“My father had been involved with the European Central Bank for years, and is widely credited with the way the euro stabilized following the shift in support from the Jaeger program to the Wall,” Hermann said. “The position of President of the European Central Bank holds a non-renewable, eight-year term; after his term was up he spent some time in the Court of Auditors, where he was when Marshall Pentecost managed to get his hands on an illicit nuclear warhead, which was apparently incredibly embarrassing for him.”

“Did we get that nuke from Russia? Russia’s not in the EU,” Newt said.

“They had submitted an application to join the EU, and it was under consideration when VK-Day happened,” Vanessa said. “Russia has since withdrawn it.”

“Also, the EU was funding a significant portion of the Bering and Siberian Walls, which fell under his direct preview,” Hermann added. “While no one in their right mind would expect funds not to be misappropriated in Russia, having them misappropriated to the ends of smuggling out a nuclear bomb was a tad much. He didn’t lose his position, clearly, or we wouldn’t need to deal with him, but it did freeze his career.”

“And now there’s some kind of election in the EU, so your Dad comes to the Shatterdome, because this is the place the nuke was smuggled to?” Newt asked.

“No, he’s in Hong Kong because this is the place where the money is flowing. We haven’t gotten a great deal of tangible results- not as far as Europe is concerned. There are no Kaiju, so the main issue is still the abundance of refugees attempting to cross various borders.”

“Which brings me back to my point of: he does know that when the Monarch went to Sydney, Australia started quieting down, right?” Vanessa said.

“He doesn’t have to be right, he just has to spin things so people sympathize with him,” Hermann said tiredly.

“Wow,” Newt said. “That’s dumb. Thanks for the reminder of why I don’t do politics.”

“And why I stayed with modeling,” Vanessa said.

“As I was saying, he’s only here because it’s an election year. He’ll find something convenient to use as a soapbox and then hopefully move on,” Hermann said, sighing. Then he propped himself up so he could face them. “Please, neither of you give him anything he could use as a soapbox. As it stands, he’ll likely want to avoid us for fear of things becoming personal and public, which means that he might attempt to attack Marshall Hansen, or Dr. Zhukova, or Chief Executive Xu.”

“Any of whom would eat him alive,” Vanessa said.

“Well, here’s hoping!” Newt said.

Hermann snorted, and settled back down. “Quite.”

There was a moment of silence, as they digested this information. Then Vanessa reached over to turn out the light, and they drifted off.

Newt normally slept in the middle, when he did sleep with Vanessa and Hermann- the basement apartment wasn’t entirely for show, sometimes he just couldn’t sleep or needed some space or Vanessa and Hermann needed some together time or whatever. But when they did sleep together, he generally ended up in the middle.

This was partially necessity. Hermann needed to be on the outside because of his bad leg and a bunch of other MS-related reasons, Vanessa needed to be on the outside so she could get to her leg, and also, these days, because she was pregnant and therefore frequently in need of the bathroom. Partially, this was because Newt was an awesome body pillow if he said so himself, and hey, he liked being the middle.

Of course, sleeping was a little difficult when you were ghost drifting with someone who _wasn’t_ sleeping. He was trying to ignore it, he really was, because ghost drifting also meant that he could tell that Hermann wanted everyone to think he was asleep and Newt was one misstep away from being snarled at because Hermann felt like he was being treated like an invalid, and actually Newt kind of liked that aspect of this whole ghost drifting thing, because yelling about their work or to clear to air or most things was fine but he didn’t like being yelled at for something he was honestly trying to avoid doing and also he didn’t like accidentally doing that thing he was trying not to do, that was the worst, but really, he would drift off and then wake up because Hermann was uncomfortable and too stubborn to do anything about it and he didn’t want to start anything because Vanessa was asleep and one of them should get a good night’s rest, there were two kids under the age of three in the house, that was an absolute necessity.

So.

Eventually Vanessa got up to use the bathroom, and came back with one of Hermann’s pain pills and a glass of water.

“Thank you,” Newt whispered on his behalf, and then fell asleep and actually managed to stay that way for a while.

It was a mixed blessing, because as predicted they shared a dream, and it was Hermann’s. Newt wasn’t entirely sure whether it was the ghost drifting itself, or if this was actually how Hermann normally dreamed, but shared dreams were a lot more vivid and linear than was normal for him.

In this particular one, Lars was busy with blueprints, and Otachi was busy destroying Frankfurt in the background.  Lars didn’t appear to notice this, and he wasn’t paying attention to him- them- Hermann either. Hermann shouted and he pleaded and Otachi rampaged until the whole building began to shake and Valerie was crying.

Except Valerie was actually crying in real life.

They jerked away at the same time. Vanessa paused in the act of putting her prosthesis back on as they got their bearings.

“Want me to get her?” Newt asked.

“Please,” Vanessa said, and Newt clambered over the end of the bed and headed for the nursery.

Valerie was not quite one yet, but had well and truly mastered the art of grabbing onto the edge of her crib and rocking back and forth while screaming. Newt, meanwhile, had mastered the art of changing diapers, but that didn’t mean he was enthusiastic about it.

“Seriously, you cannot be potty trained quickly enough,” Newt told her, speaking quietly in the hopes that it would lull her back to sleep. “We’re going to have two new infants in this house come May, you’ll be, like, one and a quarter then, that’s not too young, don’t you think?”

Valerie grabbed one of the plush dinosaurs that was sitting near her crib, and stuck its head in her mouth. Newt rolled his eyes and checked: the ghost drift had faded somewhat, but he could still feel Hermann’s emotions spike, and beyond that, could hear Vanessa and Hermann talking, trying to keep their voices down and not really managing it well enough for after-midnight hours.

“Why don’t I just keep you company for a bit, eh, Valkyrie?” he asked, smoothing back her hair- not that it took. She’d gotten Hermann’s cowlicks in spades.

He and Hermann had the Drift, and years of working together in labs that had involved more fighting than friendship; meanwhile Vanessa had managed ten years of marriage across all the troubles of long-term relationships and near-apocalyptic stress. She had a better handle on him, most days, than he did. Sometimes he even felt a bit like he’d cheated to get here.

Heh. Cheating your way into a polyamorous relationship.

It took Valerie another hour before she quit fussing, and which point Newt was pretty much dead on his feet. He curled up in the rocking chair and fell back asleep.


End file.
